In the aftermath of National Security Adviser Mike Flynn’s resignation, both parties have reached feuding consensuses on the issue that brought him down.
For Democrats, it’s all about Russia. For Republicans, it’s all about the leaks.
“Once again, I am calling on the FBI to investigate the financial, political and personal ties between President Donald Trump and Russia,” said House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in a statement typical of what Democrats were saying all week. “The American people deserve the truth.”
“President Trump’s kowtowing to Vladimir Putin is endangering our national security and emboldening a dangerous tyrant,” she added. “What do the Russians have on President Trump that he would flirt with lifting sanctions and weakening NATO?”
The Republicans countered by focusing on the fact that Flynn’s conversation with the Russian ambassador was leaked. Contents of the president’s phone calls with the Mexican president and Australian prime minister have also made it into the news, part of an uncharacteristically leaky White House.
“We are going to be outlining all of our concerns over the last 60 days that appear to all be related, maybe even coordinated in some ways,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., told Fox News. “I am going to be asking the FBI to do an assessment of this to tell us what’s going on here because we cannot continue to have these leaks as a government.”
Nunes was critical of the leaks even before Flynn resigned. So were some outside observers.
“The issue with the ouster of Flynn as national security adviser is not the mishandling of classified information, despite some of President Donald Trump’s tweets about it,” wrote Bloomberg News national security columnist Eli Lake. “It’s about Flynn’s detractors selectively disclosing to the public the communications of U.S. officials, and how this represents a chilling abuse of power.”
Reports about contacts between members of Trump’s circle and the Russians during the campaign also rely heavily on selective leaks, downplaying the caveats in most such stories that no evidence of collusion has yet been uncovered.
Many Democrats claim to believe that there are untoward connections between the president and Russia. They have been convinced of this since the intelligence community concluded that Moscow was complicit in the hacking of Democratic emails during the campaign to the detriment of the party’s presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Some Republicans, like Nunes, have argued that elements of the intelligence community, likely personnel from President Obama’s time in office, are engaged in leaking to undermine Trump. The president himself has taken a similar line.
“From intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked, it’s criminal action, a criminal act,” Trump said Wednesday. “It’s been going on for a long time, before me, but now it’s really going on. People are trying to cover up for a terrible loss that the Democrats had under Hillary Clinton.”
In the early going, the public seems to be siding with the Democrats. A Survey Monkey poll released Friday found that 67 percent want an investigation into Flynn’s resignation and 62 percent want an investigation of Russian attempts to influence the presidential election.
More importantly, 45 percent said they were more bothered by the Trump campaign’s alleged Russian connections while only 32 percent said the same about media leaks from the intelligence community.
“The problem with hammering the leaks is that Trump benefited from leaks during the campaign and happily used leaked information against Hillary Clinton,” said a former government official who supports the president. “The leaking is bad, but this hurts Trump’s ability to make the case against it.”
Republicans are also divided on Russia, with most of the congressional GOP taking a more hawkish line against Vladimir Putin than Trump. Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., Marco Rubio, R-Fla., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are particularly concerned about Russian influence in the election. All have been critical of Trump and raised the issue during the confirmation hearings for Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
Most congressional probes will look at both the leaks and Russia to some extent.
“There’s an ongoing, bipartisan investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee, and that’s ongoing,” Rubio told reporters earlier in the week. “I believe the scope of that would cover anything that has to do with Russia and its involvement in before, during and after the election. … I have full confidence that the intelligence committee is going to do a good job. If they don’t, I’ll let everyone know that we didn’t, but I believe that we can and I believe that we will.”
